By Amanda Miller in New York City
“There’s no seder like our seder, like no seder I know…” Twenty people or more would gather around Terry Miller’s dining room table for seder year after year to sing this and many other Passover parody songs from the supplemental packet she curated. A theater person to her core, Terry’s seders were theatrical and full of life, just like she was.
My dynamic mother, Terry Miller, was born and raised in Woodmere, Long Island, New York. She earned her BA at Queens College where she studied theater, went on to earn her Masters in Theater Education from NYU and completed coursework for a PhD in Theater Education at University of Denver. Theater was her greatest passion. She taught drama in middle and high schools in New York City for several years before marrying my dad, David Miller, also a Woodmere native. They were set up on a blind date and were married by my dad’s father, Rabbi Irving Miller, at Congregation Sons of Israel of Woodmere where he held the pulpit.
A few years into their marriage, they drove across the country to settle in San Diego, fulfilling my dad’s dream of residing beneath the California sun. There, they joined Congregation Beth El of La Jolla where my mom became an active member and worked as a Jewish educator. In her later years, she was involved in Beth El’s Women’s Connection group where she was truly beloved. In 2019, she was honored as the group’s Eichet Chaiyel, or Woman of Valor, and celebrated on a Shabbat that January. I was moved to witness the care and love bestowed upon her by the community that day, and her great joy in receiving the honor.
In addition to her synagogue involvement, my mom taught English and Drama in San Diego Unified middle and high schools for the majority of her years in San Diego. The highlight of her career was the 17 years she ran the award-winning drama program at Pershing Middle School, where she directed a musical every year and welcomed every child into the play who wished to take part. She loved working with young people; they helped her maintain her kid spirit and sense of play.
Our shared passion for theater was a part of our relationship that I cherished. She encouraged my creation of new performance work and traveled with me to theater festivals. She even came up with the idea for one of my most successful bits: my elderly character Edith Shlivovitz pitching a dating app for senior citizens called Senior X-Ray (Sex-Ray for short) where instead of uploading photos of their outsides, people uploaded photos of their insides and users could determine if they were healthy enough to date.
My mom loved to be silly and was able to find humor in most situations. After she was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer in January 2022, she asked, “How did these cancer cells get to all these other parts of my body? Are they, like, campers hiking around and setting up campsites roasting marshmallows around a fire? Wouldn’t that be a funny sketch?” She brought it up repeatedly until I asked if she wanted to write something together—not just a sketch, but a one-act play, and not just about the cancer cells but about the absurdity of dealing with the American medical system, which had caused her so much grief on top of the difficult diagnosis. And so, Quacks & Whacks: A Cancer Comedy was born. She flew out to New York for its premiere in April 2025 despite the physical challenges she was experiencing from her illness.
My mom faced many trials over the course of her life and, rather than allowing any of them to harden her, each made her braver and stronger, more tenacious, more loving. When she was 13, her house burned down and two weeks later her 16-year-old sister was killed in a drunk driving accident. She lost her father when she was 39. Then when she was 53, she lost her husband, my father, to lung cancer just two months after his diagnosis. She rolled up her sleeves and continued to raise and support my brother and sister and me with limited resources and no family close by while teaching full time. She really was the strongest, most determined person I ever met.
She moved from San Diego to Los Angeles after her cancer diagnosis to be closer to my siblings, Tiffany and Austin, and her grandchildren, Davida, Cobie, and Orev. While living there, she was able to see two more grandchildren born: Leo and Charlie. She always said her family was her reason for being; she poured her ferocious love into all of us every single day.
My mom passed away in her apartment in Los Angeles on January 10, 2026 surrounded by me and my siblings, showering her with love.
Her memory is the greatest blessing of our lives.
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Amanda Miller is a Jewish educator, licensed massage therapist, theater maker, and writer based in New York City.